Break
by Nike Athena
Summary: Deals with the aftermath of Yamamoto breaking his arm early on in the series, and his father Tsuyoshi's reaction.


**Break**

**Author's Notes and Miscellany: **This is a little darker than some of my other works. It deals with Takeshi when he breaks his arm in the beginning of the series, and his father Tsuyoshi's thoughts. Rated a little more highly for thoughts of suicide.

* * *

The snapping sound was unmistakable, and it was everything Yamamoto Takeshi could do to keep from screaming out; the bat dropped from his hand, the aluminum ringing dully on the dirt and glinting in the setting sun. Takeshi followed suit shortly after, his knees collapsing, the pain in them at contacting the hardened dirt a small, slight ache in comparison to the deep, stabbing pain in his arm.

His face contorted in agony, his brows furrowed tightly and his eyes screwed shut, and the involuntary tears of pain that often accompanied sudden, traumatic injuries started leaking from his closed lids. A sound was wrenched from him, and then another, something between a moan and a sob, as he cradled his wrist to his body. A few moments passed and when the pain didn't go away, he felt his panic rising.

_Oh, Gods. I've really done something stupid now._ Takeshi was unable to keep from berating himself, and felt himself go suddenly still when a new thought struck him, one that made his moaning sobs harder, wracking his body and making him clutch his wrist in an entirely different kind of agony. Because now was the very first time in Yamamoto Takeshi's life that he felt utterly and completely useless. The gods' way of telling you your life wasn't worth living.

A sudden, deep weariness swept over him, one that robbed him even of his feelings of remorse. He was cold, as if all the heat in his body had rushed out of him, and so very, very tired, and, suddenly, the ground looked like a very good place to take a nap on. So it was for several more minutes that Takeshi remained kneeling, holding his arm to his body, debating whether or not to fall asleep on the ground.

Then, as the immediate, debilitating shock started to subside, he realized that the sun was setting quickly, and he had to get home before his father started to worry. So, without thinking, and with a new drive, he propelled himself from the ground. It was with great difficulty that he slipped his bat back into its casing; moving the fingers of his right hand shot new, stabbing pains seemingly all the way into his stomach. Indeed, the first time he tried to even twitched his fingers, he ended up nearly throwing up.

So, using the crook of his elbow as a gripping device, he managed to slide the bat away and shakily zipped it up with his left hand. All that was left was his bag that he had left back in the locker room, which he retrieved after walking in an alarmingly shaky way to the school.

It was already dark when he started walking back from school, and he found himself approaching the shop before he realized where he was. His body, he realized, had traveled the familiar paths on autopilot since he had left school. The shop lights were on, he saw, and belatedly wondered why he could see them so well before he realized night had already fallen. Without comprehending that the store might have customers, and, thus, people who would be understandably frightened at the appearance of an injured boy, Takeshi staggered forward and entered through the front door.

No one was there (something slightly unusual for a Tuesday night, which was something he would have noted if he had been slightly more alive), but his father was behind the counter, preparing a small sushi display, and he looked up upon hearing someone enter.

"Welcome!" Tsuyoshi cried, looking up, before noticing it was his son. "Oh, Takeshi, welcome back. How was school…?" But Tsuyoshi's sentence trailed, because something was terribly wrong with his son; the boy's face was a sickly pallor, a small sheen of sweat on his face. The boy's breath, something Tsuyoshi heard even all the way across the room from Takeshi, was quick and shallow, and the way he clutched his arm to his chest said very much to Tsuyoshi that the boy was badly injured.

"Takeshi?" Was all he could bring himself to say past the horrible sinking in his stomach as he came around the bar to see the boy. And, even as he watched, the boy took another step in, his face a mask of shock, his lips blue, and stumbled, falling to his knees. Tsuyoshi barely managed to catch the boy before he hit the ground, catching him and cradling him, turning him over so he could look at the child. Before he could speak again, Takeshi shivered and curled up tighter into himself.

"'tou-chan?" He asked weakly, starting to shiver harder.

"Takeshi, what happened?" Tsuyoshi finally found it in him to ask. The boy jerked slightly, his knees seeming to have drawn reflexively to his body, and a small, indescribable smile that froze Tsuyoshi's heart graced his face.

"I think I broke my arm." The boy said, though it was wavering and hardly above a whisper. "Stupid, huh?" He continued, his smile showing more of his pain, before it dropped off his face altogether, replaced with strangely blank look. "But it can't be helped, right?" He flinched as his father tried to shift the boy to see the afflicted limb, but didn't have the energy to fight off his arm being gently examined. The arm was cold to the touch, and was becoming swollen, Tsuyoshi saw.

"Alright. Takeshi?" He asked, prompting the boy from his semi-unconscious state. "We have to go to the hospital to get your arm looked at." Shutting down the shop turned very simple abruptly; it was usually a thirty-minute process before going to bed, but since priorities had been put into place, it turned into a five minute event.

Takeshi was far too easy to shovel into the passenger seat; he climbed in, but had to be helped buckling up. Tsuyoshi gave his child something sugary to drink (one of Takeshi's leftover energy-drink concoctions, made from sugar, milk, eggs, and mineral water) and was relieved when he revived somewhat upon arriving at the ER. He still looked wide-eyed and far too young when the nurse gave him a preliminary examination, but managed to crack a small joke when the nurse asked him how he broke his arm.

Upon having the x-ray done, it was shown that Takeshi had broken his ulna in two pieces, though the pieces hadn't moved. The boy was promptly put into a cast, given a sling, and was ordered to rest it for six weeks.

Takeshi slept on the way home, which was something Tsuyoshi was almost grateful for; he knew his son needed the rest. But besides that, he knew his son would have to work through this potentially career-ending accident alone; it happened to all specialists, even Tsuyoshi, and there had been a time where even Tsuyoshi had been on the brink of killing himself.

So when they pulled into the alleyway beside the restaurant, Tsuyoshi looked well at the face of his handsome, talented son, knowing it could very well be one of his last. Fighting a sudden tightness in his throat and stinging in his eyes, Tsuyoshi reached out and gently shook his son (his handsome, talented boy) by the shoulder, and smiled at Takeshi's waking face. "We're home."

The next day, Tsuyoshi found that Takeshi had tried to kill himself, and had, indeed, very nearly died. But when his son came home from school, he was humming and upbeat. Any other parent would have concluded that his depression had passed, but Tsuyoshi knew better. Because Takeshi was his son, Tsuyoshi knew that Takeshi had merely found his reason to live again.

Which was something they all needed to do, really.


End file.
